


Hyssop

by JoAsakura



Series: The Language of Memory [7]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 01:03:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7597252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things go sideways in the wake of Lilith's reveal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hyssop

NOW:

The hangar was a sea of skirling black, a storm of gaping mouths folding back over each other and red eyes glowing like baleful embers in the dark

There was so much screaming, even Lucio's sound barrier couldn't fully dampen the sound as he and Reinhardt struggled to hold fast against it.

Reaper was feeding, and the only one with any idea of how to stop him was in a containment unit headed towards New Mexico.

EARLIER:

"We have to burn the watchpoint." Jack rubbed his eyes under his glasses and sighed. "We have no idea how long Mercy.. Lilith... Has been feeding Talon information about our actions. Everyone, get your go kits and leave whatever's not necessary."

"But won't they know all of our options, Jack?" Lena couldn't stop looking over at the unit where Angela slept. "If Lilith has been inside her this entire time, they know all the watchpoints."

"We've got another option." Jack started. "Ana's already headed there to make sure it's clear, but we're..."

"Don't." Widowmaker's voice, as cool and even as ever, cut him off. "You need someone on the inside of Talon. That should be me, and I shouldn't know where you're going."

"Amelie, don't." Gabriel said from across the room. His limbs still felt heavy, disconnected. Lilith's attack left him broken and he hated the sensation. He was hungry and weak and it was so hard to even sit up. "I can..."

"You're not an option, Reaper." She tapped out another one of those ridiculously pink cigarettes with an apologetic little shrug in Tracer's direction. "It's become all too clear to them, I think, that your biggest weakness is an old man in a flag jacket." Widowmaker purred. "You were always a rogue variable to Talon. I'm their masterpiece."

"You never explained why you came here." Symmetra said softly, shaping and reshaping tiny hard light objects to the beat of something only she could hear. "Or why they should take you back."

"Talon broke the woman I was, made Widowmaker in her place, but I am no longer content to simply be their expensive killer toy, to be brought at out whim. I am not who I was, but I don't have to be what they made me." She took a long drag on the cigarette, feet propped on the meeting table. "But if I call in this base, they'll think I've just been a good little girl, worming my way back into your confidence."

"How long do you think it'll take for them to get here to attack after you call it in?" Jack said and Gabriel did not like the sinking feeling in what passed for his guts.

"Two hours, maximum." Widowmaker stubbed out her cigarette, and Jack nodded.

"Winston, get Athena, load up Mercy and take Pharah with you for backup. D.Va, I want you on the launch deck to provide cover, then you go with them too. Junkrat, I need you to trap the all the residential corridors, you have twenty minutes." Jack paced briskly as the skinny Aussie scrambled from the room with a delighted whoop. "Symmetra and Torbjorn will turret up the main entry points, *discreetly*. We need them to not realise we've already gotten the important bits out of here. We want them to think they've caught us unawares. Dismissed. Move people, MOVE."

"Risky, but unpredictable." Gabriel slid his arms around Jack, finally getting the other man to stop his movement. "You'd think you were taking a page out of one of my books."

"You can't just bash your head against every problem." Jack leaned back against him. "I learned that the hard way." Carefully, he turned in Gabriel's embrace. "McCree's got an old Deadlock base location that he swears is secure."

"Great, it's probably a wreck." Gabriel sighed. "I actually was starting to like it here."

"Me too. Maybe next time, we'll get that little place in Greece." Jack rubbed his hands over Gabriel's long sleeves. "Suit up, I'm gonna need you to cat herd everyone. We don't have a lot of..."

The first explosion shook the base hard enough to knock the monitors clear from the wall, and a surge of black roiled around the two of them to catch the plaster raining from the ceiling.

"That sure as hell wasn't two hours!" Jack shouted as they bolted from the conference room.

Widowmaker met them in the corridor. "I made the call, they said they were already en route!" She yelled over the din as another blast rocked the building. "Your Doctor Ziegler must have missed a check in with her handlers!"

"I'll get a strike team down to the hangar!" Gabriel said, vanishing into a cloud of black. "Widow, you're with me. Jack, get the monkey moving!"

"MCCREE! YOU'RE WITH WINSTON, GET HIS UNIT OUT OF HERE NOW!" Jack shouted into comms as he fitted his faceplate on, the tactical display overlaying his fading vision with new data. His jacket and pulse rifle were in his equipment locker in the hangar, and he dodged crumbling concrete as he ran.

He didn't need the enhancements to track the sound of Zarya's cannon, the rapid fire of D.Va's MEKA as she covered Winston's transport. The sharp ozone smell of Hanzo's dragons as he cleared them a path.

Mei had already blocked off some of the access points, buying Torbjorn time to get some defenses up and running, but the scene in the hangar was pure chaos by the time Jack got there.

They had been working together for months, becoming a team, but Talon had been training for years and it showed. "REINHARDT, WE NEED A ROAD! ZEN, I WANT EVERYONE ON THAT TRANSPORT NOW!" Jack roared, pulse rifle kicking in his hand as he laid down covering fire.

Across the way, he saw the red muzzle flashes of Gabriel's shotguns as he made a distraction, the blue streak of Tracer's powers as she danced across the hangar, launched airborne by Roadhog's powerful toss. In between, the spark of green as Genji took down the ones she missed.

They were a strange bunch, light years away from the very first iterations of Overwatch, he thought. But they were good. They were going to be great.

He was proud of them all.

He was..

~~

Gabriel paused, mid-motion as he heard the distinctive sound of Widowmaker's rifle. Overhead, the air beat with more Talon airships, their designs light-years ahead of the old transports they'd found in the Watchpoint's mothballs.

He hadn't bothered to put his mask down, a sick thrill, letting Talon know exactly who death was, and where he walked now. But he turned, the sounds of the battle fading into the background, as he watched Jack fall, pulse rifle clattering to the hangar floor in a burst of bloody red.

There were a team of Talon troops on Jack immediately, and he could see Amelie, her mouth pressed tight as she shouldered her rifle and marched towards the nearest Talon ship.

Jack. They were *taking Jack*, he realised with a start as the sounds of the fight suddenly came rushing back, and Gabriel was one second into shadow-stepping across the hangar when there was a flash and a screech of noise unlike any he'd heard before. His vision splintered and his guns fell to the floor from unfeeling fingers.

Lilith had given them information on how to neutralise him, he understood as he fought to maintain cohesion. There were too many of them, and he could hear Reinhardt yelling for the team to fall back to the transports, to get out. The old German couldn't see through the smoke and the weapon fire what Gabriel could.

(THEY'VE GOT JACK) He tried to say into the comms but the words wouldn't form, and they were dragging Jack, limp, into the Talon ship. His visor shattered, his gun lost.

(Geneva, Jack is crying as he takes a swing at him. New York, and Gabriel can't even look at him after he takes the Strike Commander promotion, Los Angeles and they're slow dancing in front of his mother's Christmas tree. A million moments he'd thought were lost forever until Jack had taken his hand again, agreed to start over)

And every shred of anger and fear and hope Gabriel Reyes had nursed inside of his starving form suddenly snapped.

 

NOW:

Gabriel didn't even know Mei had frozen him until he came back to a sudden awareness in the hangar of a burned-out Deadlock hideout.

He had left a hangar full of shredded, desiccated corpses and the energy thrummed in his makeshift nerves. He could still hear them screaming, still see Jack's still form being thrown into the escaping ship.

That had been hours ago.

"You killed every one that was left." Reinhardt's voice was heavy through his helmet's speakers. "They took Jack."

"I know that, you tin can!" Gabriel spat, brushing the ice from his arms. The transport's cargo bay was filled with his erstwhile teammates, every one of them bruised and battered and grim from the retreat. "We have to go get him!"

"We have to keep Overwatch alive!" Reinhardt rumbled back, hands twitching on his hammer. "That's what Jack wanted! To keep YOU alive! All I could think of was for Mei to freeze you to save you and the rest of us FROM you, dumbkopf!"

"If you put me on ice again, I will strip every bit of flesh from your oversized frame." Gabriel hissed at him, and the German sat back. "Bring me back there, let me track them."

"You barely got out with your lives." Ana's voice was sharp, and Gabriel wheeled around to look her in the eye. "We're trying to track him now, but I'm not sacrificing the rest of you to save him. It was always a risk and he knew that." Her jaw twitched, clearly unhappy with the burden Jack had placed on her shoulders.

"I'm not losing him again, Ana. I'm not losing us again." Gabriel spat, stalking towards what passed for the command room. "You can either help me, or keep everyone out of my way."

~~

Jack woke up, arm burning with pain, half-blinded by the brilliant lights in his face. He couldn't move, and his mouth felt as if it were filled with lead.

Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Widowmaker, as they led her away.

Then someone else, barely more than a silhouette in his watering vision. A man's voice, cultured, smooth - a politicians' voice crooning in his ear. " You should have stayed dead, Commander Morrison. We gave you such a nice statue. Sixty-five primary schools around the world are named after you. You left such a good legacy. And now we're going to have to ruin that because you didn't have the good sense to stay dead."

"So now." The man continued. "Now we have to fix that."

 

 


End file.
